1 00:00:00,315 --> 00:00:04,492 Lawrence Lessig: Thank you very much. It's extremely cool to be here. 2 00:00:06,430 --> 00:00:08,539 It's just about as cool as when I spoke at Pixar. 3 00:00:08,739 --> 00:00:11,922 I think of these two as being highlights of my career. 4 00:00:12,122 --> 00:00:15,163 So, thank you very much for having me. 5 00:00:16,671 --> 00:00:21,721 I have two small ideas I want to use as an introduction to an argument, 6 00:00:22,906 --> 00:00:26,909 about the nature of access to scientific knowledge in the context of the internet, 7 00:00:27,663 --> 00:00:32,709 and use that argument as a step towards a plea about what we should do. 8 00:00:33,432 --> 00:00:35,651 So here is the first idea. 9 00:00:36,313 --> 00:00:39,054 I want to call it the "White-effect". 10 00:00:40,408 --> 00:00:46,207 And I name that after Justice Byron White, justice of the US Supreme Court, 11 00:00:46,346 --> 00:00:50,170 appointed by John F. Kennedy - there he is in 1962 12 00:00:51,170 --> 00:00:57,211 - famous before that as 'Whizzer' White on the Yale University football team. 13 00:00:57,565 --> 00:01:00,387 When he was appointed to the Supreme Court, he was a famous liberal, 14 00:01:01,741 --> 00:01:07,123 renowned liberal, the only appointee that John Kennedy had to the Supreme Court. 15 00:01:07,123 --> 00:01:15,434 But 'Whizzer' White grew old, and he is probably most famous for an infamous opinion, 16 00:01:15,588 --> 00:01:18,968 which he penned on behalf of the Supreme Court, Bowers v. Hardwick, 17 00:01:19,230 --> 00:01:23,837 an opinion where the Supreme Court upheld the Criminalization of Sodomy laws, 18 00:01:24,144 --> 00:01:27,973 with the passage: 'Against this background, to claim that a right to engage 19 00:01:28,034 --> 00:01:33,701 in such conduct' - homosexual sodomy - 'is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" 20 00:01:33,763 --> 00:01:38,749 or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious.' 21 00:01:40,072 --> 00:01:42,558 Now, this is what I want to think of as the "White Effect". 22 00:01:43,374 --> 00:01:51,169 To be a liberal or a progressive is always relative to a moment, and that moment changes, 23 00:01:51,277 --> 00:01:56,487 and too many are liberal or progressive no more. 24 00:01:58,148 --> 00:02:00,327 So, that's the "White effect". Here is the second idea. 25 00:02:00,466 --> 00:02:05,034 The Harvard Gazette is a kind of propaganda publication of Harvard University, 26 00:02:05,188 --> 00:02:07,573 it talks about all the happy things at Harvard. 27 00:02:07,696 --> 00:02:12,580 So here's an article that it wrote, about an extraordinary macro-economist, 28 00:02:12,611 --> 00:02:17,647 Gita Gopinath, who has just come to Harvard, received tenure last year 29 00:02:17,709 --> 00:02:21,478 and is one of the most influential macroeconomists in the United States right now. 30 00:02:21,755 --> 00:02:25,406 This article talks about her work and her research, and at the very end, 31 00:02:25,529 --> 00:02:27,337 there is this puzzling passage, where it says: 32 00:02:27,998 --> 00:02:33,429 'Still, the shelves in her new office are nearly bare, since, said Gopinath, 33 00:02:33,568 --> 00:02:37,718 "Everything I need is on the Internet now." ' 34 00:02:40,441 --> 00:02:43,062 Right, that's the second idea. Here is the argument. 35 00:02:44,062 --> 00:02:51,252 So, copyright is a regulation by the State intended to change 36 00:02:51,344 --> 00:02:57,560 a regulation by the market. It's an exclusive right, a monopoly right, 37 00:02:57,699 --> 00:03:00,868 a property right granted by the State, which is necessary 38 00:03:00,991 --> 00:03:03,880 to solve an inevitable market failure. 39 00:03:05,311 --> 00:03:09,752 Now, by saying that it's necessary to solve an inevitable market failure, 40 00:03:10,091 --> 00:03:14,108 I'm marking myself as a pro-copyright scholar, 41 00:03:14,954 --> 00:03:18,884 in the sense that I believe copyright is necessary. Even in a digital age, 42 00:03:18,884 --> 00:03:23,854 especially in a digital age, copyright is necessary to achieve 43 00:03:24,623 --> 00:03:28,205 certain incentives that otherwise would be lost. 44 00:03:28,974 --> 00:03:33,648 But in the internet age, what we've seen as a fight about copyright, 45 00:03:33,864 --> 00:03:39,084 about the scope of copyright, waged most consistently in the context 46 00:03:39,146 --> 00:03:44,274 of the battle over artists' rights, in particular, in the context of music, 47 00:03:44,382 --> 00:03:50,805 where massive 'sharing' - sharing which is technically illegal - has lead to a fight 48 00:03:50,959 --> 00:03:56,322 fought by artists and especially by artists' representatives. 49 00:03:56,737 --> 00:04:02,212 And we from the Free Culture movement, have challenged the people 50 00:04:02,335 --> 00:04:04,527 who have been waging that fight. 51 00:04:04,635 --> 00:04:08,545 And they defend copyright in the context of that fight. 52 00:04:09,484 --> 00:04:15,908 But if we get above the din of this battle, the important thing to keep in mind 53 00:04:16,093 --> 00:04:21,614 is that both sides in this fight acknowledge that copyright is essential 54 00:04:21,691 --> 00:04:24,401 for certain creative work, 55 00:04:24,786 --> 00:04:30,578 and we need to respect copyright for that creative work. 56 00:04:30,578 --> 00:04:35,712 We, from the Free Culture movement, need to respect copyright for that work. 57 00:04:35,804 --> 00:04:40,935 We need to recognize that there is a place for a sensible copyright policy 58 00:04:41,427 --> 00:04:44,074 to protect and encourage that work. 59 00:04:45,659 --> 00:04:48,111 But, however - and here is the important distinction - 60 00:04:50,127 --> 00:04:57,736 Not only artists rely upon copyright, copyright is also relied upon by publishers, 61 00:04:57,859 --> 00:05:00,252 and publishers are a different animal. 62 00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:07,664 We don't have to be as negative as John Milton was when he wrote publishers are 63 00:05:07,664 --> 00:05:10,752 "Old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of books 64 00:05:10,875 --> 00:05:15,349 - men who do no labor in an honest profession, to [them], learning is indebted." 65 00:05:15,734 --> 00:05:20,279 We don't have to go quite that far to recognize why publishers are different, 66 00:05:20,464 --> 00:05:23,695 that the economic problem for publishers is different 67 00:05:24,126 --> 00:05:28,300 from the economic problems presented by creating. 68 00:05:29,300 --> 00:05:34,094 So who is copyright for? The publishers or the artists? 69 00:05:35,340 --> 00:05:38,600 Well, since the beginning of copyright in the Anglo-American tradition, 70 00:05:38,831 --> 00:05:43,554 the Statute of Anne of 1710, there has been this argument about whether copyright 71 00:05:43,554 --> 00:05:45,516 was intended for the publishers or the artists. 72 00:05:46,501 --> 00:05:52,727 When the Statute of Anne was originally introduced, it gave a perpetual term of copyright, 73 00:05:52,866 --> 00:05:56,048 which the publishers understood to be a protection for them. 74 00:05:56,217 --> 00:05:59,188 It was then amended to give just a limited term for copyright. 75 00:05:59,280 --> 00:06:03,789 Publishers were puzzled about that, because it wouldn't make sense to give a limited term 76 00:06:03,789 --> 00:06:05,474 if it was the publisher that was to be protected. 77 00:06:06,089 --> 00:06:13,149 In 1769, a court case in the context of Millar v. Taylor seemed to suggest that 78 00:06:13,180 --> 00:06:17,157 despite the limitations of the Statute of Anne, copyright was for ever. 79 00:06:17,803 --> 00:06:24,576 But in 1774, in a very famous case about this book, The Seasons, by James Thomson, 80 00:06:24,884 --> 00:06:30,421 the House of Lords held that copyright protected by the Status of Anne was limited, 81 00:06:31,282 --> 00:06:35,279 holding for the first time that works passed into a public domain. 82 00:06:35,479 --> 00:06:39,994 And for the first time in English history, works including Shakespeare 83 00:06:40,087 --> 00:06:44,232 passed into the public domain. And in this moment, we can say Free Culture was born. 84 00:06:45,386 --> 00:06:49,558 And it also clarified that copyright was not intended for the publisher. 85 00:06:49,558 --> 00:06:53,090 Even if it benefited the publishers, it was a creative right 86 00:06:53,090 --> 00:07:00,020 and author's right. Even if benefitting publishers, copyright was for authors. 87 00:07:01,850 --> 00:07:06,908 So, I remark these obvious borders about the scope of copyright, 88 00:07:07,046 --> 00:07:13,738 because we tend to forget them. We've been fighting a battle in the context of copyright 89 00:07:13,738 --> 00:07:19,118 where copyright is essential, and we are spending too little attention 90 00:07:19,734 --> 00:07:23,910 about a battle in a context where copyright is not essential. 91 00:07:24,864 --> 00:07:30,839 And I mean by that, in the context of science, in the context that Gopinath was speaking of 92 00:07:30,839 --> 00:07:35,226 when she talked about everything being available on the internet. 93 00:07:35,380 --> 00:07:39,531 And the consequence of failing to pay attention to this second context 94 00:07:39,531 --> 00:07:43,619 within which this battle is being waged is that there is a trouble here 95 00:07:43,619 --> 00:07:45,419 that too few see. 96 00:07:45,939 --> 00:07:48,255 So let's think about this claim that everything is on the internet now. 97 00:07:48,855 --> 00:07:51,139 What does that mean? 98 00:07:51,631 --> 00:07:55,562 Here is a particular example to evaluate what that means. 99 00:07:56,762 --> 00:08:00,469 Much of my work, these days, is focusing on corruption 100 00:08:00,484 --> 00:08:03,229 in the context of this institution, Congress. 101 00:08:03,722 --> 00:08:06,821 So let's say that we wanted to study, you wanted to study with me, 102 00:08:07,006 --> 00:08:13,298 corruption in this context. Go to Google Scholar and enter a search for campaign finance. 103 00:08:13,682 --> 00:08:17,065 Here are the top articles that would be listed from that search. 104 00:08:17,911 --> 00:08:20,338 So let's say you wanted to browse through these articles 105 00:08:20,338 --> 00:08:26,241 and get a sense of campaign finance and how it might be related to corruption in Congress. 106 00:08:26,625 --> 00:08:29,739 So here are the top 10 articles. This first one, a very famous one 107 00:08:29,739 --> 00:08:32,735 by my former colleague Pam Karlan and Sam Issacharof. 108 00:08:33,627 --> 00:08:38,376 You would find, to get access to this article, you'd have to pay $29.95. 109 00:08:38,684 --> 00:08:43,053 The second article, housed at JSTOR, you'd have to get through to get permission 110 00:08:43,053 --> 00:08:46,533 from the Columbia Law Review - not quite clear how you would do that. 111 00:08:46,779 --> 00:08:52,187 Third article, again, $29.95. The fourth article, protected by Questia, 112 00:08:52,357 --> 00:08:58,514 we learn that you can get a 1-day free trial to all of these Oxford University Press articles, 113 00:08:58,622 --> 00:09:01,507 you'd only have to pay when that day is over 99 dollars 114 00:09:01,507 --> 00:09:03,007 to continue for a year. 115 00:09:03,130 --> 00:09:05,641 Here is the 4th article again, protected by JSTOR. 116 00:09:05,641 --> 00:09:09,638 The 5th article, it's an economics article, so the price is right on the surface: 117 00:09:09,715 --> 00:09:12,058 10 dollars to purchase access to this article. 118 00:09:12,151 --> 00:09:15,167 Here's the 7th article, Columbia Law Review. 119 00:09:15,167 --> 00:09:19,966 8th article, Columbia Law Review, 9th article, protected again by JSTOR, 120 00:09:20,073 --> 00:09:28,440 10th article, $29.95. So, how accessible is this information to the general public? 121 00:09:29,055 --> 00:09:32,763 Well, one of these you can get access to for free, at least one time only, 122 00:09:33,071 --> 00:09:39,554 One of them you can pay $10 for. 3 of them, $29.95, and 5 of them, terms unknown, 123 00:09:39,754 --> 00:09:41,316 protected by JSTOR. 124 00:09:41,977 --> 00:09:45,743 So, when Gopinath says "Everything I need is on the internet", 125 00:09:45,789 --> 00:09:51,135 what does she mean? What she means is if - and this is a big if - 126 00:09:53,812 --> 00:09:58,227 you're a tenured professor at an elite university or we could say a professor, 127 00:09:58,365 --> 00:10:00,730 or a student or professor in an elite university, or maybe 128 00:10:00,730 --> 00:10:06,125 a student or professor at a US university, if you are a member of the knowledge elite, 129 00:10:06,417 --> 00:10:09,939 then you have effectively free access to all of this information. 130 00:10:10,462 --> 00:10:14,074 But if you are from the rest of the world? Not so much. 131 00:10:15,274 --> 00:10:17,495 Now, the thing to recognize is we built this world, 132 00:10:17,634 --> 00:10:24,109 we built this architecture for access, these flows from the deployment of copyright, 133 00:10:24,340 --> 00:10:30,513 but here, copyright to benefit publishers. Not to enable authors. 134 00:10:30,836 --> 00:10:34,585 Not one of these authors gets money from copyright. 135 00:10:34,708 --> 00:10:38,685 Not one of them wants the distribution of their articles limited. 136 00:10:38,901 --> 00:10:44,094 Not one of them has a business model that turns upon restricting access to their work. 137 00:10:44,094 --> 00:10:46,744 Not one of them should support this system. 138 00:10:46,913 --> 00:10:52,666 As a knowledge policy for the creators of this knowledge, this is crazy. 139 00:10:53,589 --> 00:10:55,458 And the craziness doesn't stop here. 140 00:10:56,904 --> 00:11:02,006 So, my third child, this extraordinarily beautiful girl, Samantha Tess, 141 00:11:04,082 --> 00:11:08,037 when she was born, the doctors were worried she had a condition 142 00:11:08,037 --> 00:11:12,206 that would suggest jaundice. I had jaundice as a baby, so I didn't think it was serious, 143 00:11:12,298 --> 00:11:18,093 and I was told very forcefully by her doctor, this is extroardinarily serious. 144 00:11:18,678 --> 00:11:23,373 If this condition manifest in the dangerous condition, it would produce brain damage, 145 00:11:23,373 --> 00:11:24,489 possibly death. 146 00:11:24,704 --> 00:11:28,871 So, of course, we were terrified. I went home and I did what every academic did - does: 147 00:11:29,102 --> 00:11:33,796 I pulled everything I could from the web to study about what jaundice was 148 00:11:33,873 --> 00:11:39,010 and what the conditions were. Now, because I am a Harvard professor, 149 00:11:39,010 --> 00:11:43,003 of course, I didn't have to pay to get access to this information, but I just kept the tally. 150 00:11:43,003 --> 00:11:47,543 To get access to the 20 articles that I wanted access to was $435, 151 00:11:47,589 --> 00:11:50,816 for the ordinary human, not a Harvard professor. OK. 152 00:11:51,447 --> 00:11:56,542 So I gathered these articles and set them aside, believing this problem 153 00:11:56,542 --> 00:11:59,171 would not manifest itself in a serious way. 154 00:11:59,832 --> 00:12:05,633 But on her third day, she fell into a stupor, and we called the doctor, 155 00:12:05,633 --> 00:12:08,835 and the doctor was panciked and he said we had to get to the hospital immediately. 156 00:12:09,712 --> 00:12:14,292 So, at 3 o'clock in the morning, we trundled the baby up and raced to the hospital. 157 00:12:14,769 --> 00:12:17,889 We were sitting in the waiting room, and I brought the articles with me, 158 00:12:17,951 --> 00:12:22,168 because I wanted something to do, to distract me from the terror 159 00:12:22,168 --> 00:12:23,960 that my child had this condition. 160 00:12:24,237 --> 00:12:27,685 And I picked up the first of these articles, which is actually free, 161 00:12:27,839 --> 00:12:31,061 published on the web for free, at the American Family Physician, 162 00:12:31,061 --> 00:12:33,022 and I started reading about this condition. 163 00:12:33,592 --> 00:12:37,126 And I got to this table, a table that was going to describe 164 00:12:37,203 --> 00:12:43,902 when you should worry about whether the child would have too severe of this exposure. 165 00:12:44,456 --> 00:12:46,263 I turned the page, and this is what I found: 166 00:12:47,340 --> 00:12:51,245 "The rightsholder did not grant rights to reproduce this item in electronic media. 167 00:12:51,337 --> 00:12:54,361 For the missing item, see the original print version of this publication." 168 00:12:55,561 --> 00:12:59,859 And I had this moment of liberation from fear about my child, 169 00:12:59,859 --> 00:13:03,611 because I turned to fear about our culture. I thought, this is outrageous! 170 00:13:03,765 --> 00:13:09,437 The idea that we are regulating access down to the chart in an article 171 00:13:09,452 --> 00:13:12,984 that was posted for free to help, not doctors, but parents 172 00:13:13,077 --> 00:13:15,236 understand what this condition was. 173 00:13:15,420 --> 00:13:18,760 We are regulating access to parts of articles. 174 00:13:19,960 --> 00:13:24,393 Now here and throughout our architecture for access, 175 00:13:24,393 --> 00:13:27,599 we are building an infrastructure for this regulation. 176 00:13:27,876 --> 00:13:31,520 Think about the Google Books project, which is perfecting control down to the sentence, 177 00:13:31,736 --> 00:13:35,424 the ability to regulate access down to the sentence. 178 00:13:36,363 --> 00:13:40,930 By the way, I alway forget to tell this: the kid is fine, she didn't have jaundice, 179 00:13:41,100 --> 00:13:43,913 it is a complete non issue. 180 00:13:44,298 --> 00:13:48,394 But the point is, we are architecting access here, for what purpose? 181 00:13:48,394 --> 00:13:53,560 To maximize revenue. And why? Revenue to the artists? 182 00:13:53,637 --> 00:13:57,303 Revenues necessary to produce the incentive to create? 183 00:13:57,303 --> 00:14:01,150 Is this a limitation that serves any of the real objectives of copyright? 184 00:14:02,042 --> 00:14:03,312 The answer is no. 185 00:14:03,789 --> 00:14:08,275 It is simply the natural result of for-profit production 186 00:14:08,321 --> 00:14:12,334 for any good that we, quote, must have. 187 00:14:13,488 --> 00:14:19,589 As Bergstrom and McAfee describe in a really fantastic little bit of work, 188 00:14:19,712 --> 00:14:24,193 if you compare the cost per page of for-profit publishers 189 00:14:24,316 --> 00:14:28,975 and the cost per page of not-for-profit publishers in these different fields of science, 190 00:14:29,113 --> 00:14:33,505 it's a 4 and a half times factor difference cost per page. 191 00:14:34,351 --> 00:14:39,735 That is a function of different, of these having different objectives. 192 00:14:39,735 --> 00:14:43,063 One objective is to spread knowledge: that's the not-for-profit publishers, 193 00:14:43,217 --> 00:14:47,794 and one objective, to maximize profit: that's the for-profit publishers. 194 00:14:49,348 --> 00:14:54,780 Now, this architecture for access is beginning to build resistance. 195 00:14:55,949 --> 00:14:57,819 So, think about the story of JSTOR. 196 00:14:59,034 --> 00:15:02,391 JSTOR was launched in 1995, with an extraordinary amount of funding 197 00:15:02,391 --> 00:15:08,378 from the Mellon Foundation. That funding produced a huge archive 198 00:15:08,378 --> 00:15:13,519 of journal articles. So that there are now more than 1200 journals, 20 collections, 199 00:15:13,519 --> 00:15:19,993 53 disciplines, 303'000 issues, about 38 million pages in JSTOR archive. 200 00:15:21,516 --> 00:15:24,053 When this archive was launched, everybody thought it was brilliant. 201 00:15:24,945 --> 00:15:27,520 Everybody thought the access here was extraordinary. 202 00:15:28,013 --> 00:15:32,628 But today? There is increasingly criticism growing out there 203 00:15:32,628 --> 00:15:35,685 about how JSTOR makes its information accessible. 204 00:15:35,870 --> 00:15:39,207 We could think of it as a kind of "White effect". 205 00:15:39,468 --> 00:15:44,496 It was liberal when it was launched, but what has it become as it has grown old? 206 00:15:44,927 --> 00:15:47,767 So, for example, here is an article published in the 207 00:15:47,767 --> 00:15:51,706 California Historical Society Quarterly. It's 6 pages long. 208 00:15:51,860 --> 00:15:56,914 To get it, you have to pay $20 to JSTOR, this non-profit organization, 209 00:15:57,068 --> 00:16:01,419 leading Carl Malamud, who of course is famous for his Public Resources site, 210 00:16:01,557 --> 00:16:04,406 to tweet in the following way: "JSTOR is morally offensive. 211 00:16:04,514 --> 00:16:08,843 $20 for a 6-page article, unless you happen to work at a fancy school." 212 00:16:09,459 --> 00:16:12,955 Now, you might say, "This is a really important academic archive", 213 00:16:13,078 --> 00:16:16,925 but the question is whether this really important academic archive 214 00:16:16,925 --> 00:16:20,339 is going to become a kind of RIAA for the academy. 215 00:16:20,447 --> 00:16:24,193 Begging the question that the "White effect" always begs, 216 00:16:24,193 --> 00:16:28,430 whether we could do this better under a different set of assumptions. 217 00:16:28,599 --> 00:16:34,405 Now, of course the Open Access movement is the movement that was launched 218 00:16:34,405 --> 00:16:37,274 to try and do this better under different circumstances. 219 00:16:37,274 --> 00:16:42,258 Now, it has a long history, but its real push was inspired by 220 00:16:42,305 --> 00:16:46,466 a dramatic increase in the cost of journals. 221 00:16:46,604 --> 00:16:52,338 So, if this is a study between 1986 and 2004 by the American Research Libraries, 222 00:16:52,446 --> 00:16:57,964 this is the increase in inflation, this is the increase in the cost of serials, 223 00:16:57,964 --> 00:17:02,467 it's obvious that the market power of these publishers is being exploited, 224 00:17:02,574 --> 00:17:08,526 because the purchasers of these serials have no choice but to buy them. 225 00:17:08,680 --> 00:17:15,435 It's in part motivated by this cost concern, it's also motivated by a sense of unfairness. 226 00:17:15,604 --> 00:17:17,900 We do all the work, they get all the money, here. 227 00:17:18,730 --> 00:17:22,904 So the response to these two kinds of concerns has been two: 228 00:17:23,058 --> 00:17:28,230 #1 an open access self-archiving movement, where the push has been 229 00:17:28,230 --> 00:17:31,113 "Let's get as many things out there archived on the Web as we can, 230 00:17:31,205 --> 00:17:34,442 pre-prints and whatever we can get up, and make sure 231 00:17:34,442 --> 00:17:38,550 the Web can make them accessible" - and an Open Access publishing movement. 232 00:17:39,058 --> 00:17:41,412 Now, what's the difference between these two movements? 233 00:17:41,412 --> 00:17:48,212 The difference is licensing. Some "open" is "free", in the sense that Richard Stallman 234 00:17:48,212 --> 00:17:52,721 made famous by his quote: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. 235 00:17:52,890 --> 00:17:56,897 To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, 236 00:17:56,897 --> 00:17:58,997 not as in free beer." 237 00:18:00,151 --> 00:18:05,605 So, some aspect of the Open Access publishing is free as in free speech, 238 00:18:05,929 --> 00:18:11,258 some "open" is not. Some is just free as in: "You can download it freely, 239 00:18:11,396 --> 00:18:15,785 but the rights that you get from the download are just as broad 240 00:18:15,785 --> 00:18:18,932 as narrowly granted by some implicit copyright rule. 241 00:18:19,193 --> 00:18:26,616 Now, "free", as in licensed freely, has been the objective that the Science Commons project, 242 00:18:26,616 --> 00:18:29,006 which is a project that Creative Commons has been pushing, 243 00:18:29,052 --> 00:18:34,696 and pushing as part of a broader strategy for producing 244 00:18:34,696 --> 00:18:38,225 the information architecture that science needs, as they announce 245 00:18:38,225 --> 00:18:41,043 in their "Principles for open science". There are four principles here. 246 00:18:41,043 --> 00:18:46,292 The first is, there should be open access to literature, by which Science Commons says: 247 00:18:46,369 --> 00:18:49,282 you should be on the internet, literature "should be on the internet 248 00:18:49,375 --> 00:18:52,665 in digital form, with permission granted in advance 249 00:18:52,757 --> 00:18:56,987 to users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link 250 00:18:57,080 --> 00:19:02,629 to the full texts of articles, crawl them indexing, pass them as data to software, 251 00:19:02,706 --> 00:19:04,844 or use them for any other lawful purpose, 252 00:19:04,890 --> 00:19:09,623 without financial, legal or technical barriers other than those inseparable 253 00:19:09,623 --> 00:19:11,874 from gaining access to the internet itself." 254 00:19:12,305 --> 00:19:14,526 That's what "free", here, means. 255 00:19:15,003 --> 00:19:18,337 Second, access to research tools: there should be "materials necessary 256 00:19:18,337 --> 00:19:22,202 to replicate funded research - cell lines, model animals, DNA tools, 257 00:19:22,386 --> 00:19:26,152 reagents, and more - should be described in digital formats, 258 00:19:26,199 --> 00:19:29,330 made available under standard terms of use or contracts, 259 00:19:29,330 --> 00:19:34,717 with infrastructure or resources to fulfill requests to qualified scientists, 260 00:19:34,717 --> 00:19:37,506 and with full credit provided to the scientist who created the tools." 261 00:19:37,676 --> 00:19:42,513 #3 Data should be in the public domain. "Research data, data sets, databases, 262 00:19:42,513 --> 00:19:44,367 and protocols should be in the public domain." 263 00:19:44,367 --> 00:19:46,436 meaning no copyright restrictions at all. 264 00:19:46,513 --> 00:19:49,078 And 4, Open cyber-infrastructure: 265 00:19:49,155 --> 00:19:52,607 "Data without structure and annotation is an opportunity lost. 266 00:19:52,699 --> 00:19:56,970 Research data should flow in an open, public and extensible infrastructure 267 00:19:57,016 --> 00:20:01,957 that supports its recombination and reconfiguration into computer models, 268 00:20:02,050 --> 00:20:03,965 its searchability by search engines, 269 00:20:03,996 --> 00:20:08,166 and its use by both scientists and the taxpaying public. 270 00:20:08,258 --> 00:20:11,217 This infrastructure is an essential public good." 271 00:20:12,125 --> 00:20:15,945 Now, my view is, this the right way - you might think this is the left way - 272 00:20:15,945 --> 00:20:22,031 but it's the correct way to instantiate this Open Access movement. 273 00:20:22,231 --> 00:20:25,982 The values and the efficiency and the justice in this architecture 274 00:20:26,089 --> 00:20:29,880 are the right values, efficiency and justice for an Open Access movement. 275 00:20:29,880 --> 00:20:34,325 So let's call it, following Stallman, the Free Access Movement. 276 00:20:34,479 --> 00:20:36,781 And the critical question of the Free Access movement 277 00:20:36,874 --> 00:20:41,455 is the license that governs access to the information being provided. 278 00:20:41,455 --> 00:20:43,752 Does the license grant freedoms? 279 00:20:44,260 --> 00:20:47,556 And that, of course, was the motivation between the Public Library of Science - 280 00:20:47,664 --> 00:20:50,692 every one of their articles is published under a Creative Commons 281 00:20:50,754 --> 00:20:53,203 Attribution license, the freest license we have. 282 00:20:54,126 --> 00:20:59,767 And that is increasingly the practice, surprisingly, of the largest publishers, 283 00:20:59,767 --> 00:21:02,910 as described by this wonderful project housed here at CERN, 284 00:21:03,064 --> 00:21:05,577 which is studying Open Access publishing. 285 00:21:06,654 --> 00:21:12,068 This is the first of three stages to this project. When studying the large publishers, 286 00:21:12,191 --> 00:21:16,290 this study concludes that "Half of the large publishers use some version 287 00:21:16,290 --> 00:21:21,364 of a Creative Commons license. These seven publish 72% of the titles 288 00:21:21,364 --> 00:21:23,879 and 71% of the articles investigated. 289 00:21:23,956 --> 00:21:31,461 And of these, 82% use the freest license, cc-by, and 18% use cc-by-nc", non commercial. 290 00:21:31,676 --> 00:21:38,550 And that of course is an excellent report on the progress of this free access movement 291 00:21:38,550 --> 00:21:40,497 in the context of the largest publishers. 292 00:21:40,497 --> 00:21:45,635 But what's not excellent in this story is the other publishers here. 293 00:21:46,219 --> 00:21:52,081 For these other publishers, only 73% you can determine copyright status 294 00:21:52,081 --> 00:21:58,375 69% transfer the copyright to the publisher. Only 21 % of the articles 295 00:21:58,421 --> 00:22:01,300 have any Creative Commons license attached at all. 296 00:22:02,300 --> 00:22:08,111 Now, this is because these other publishers are using copyright as a means, 297 00:22:09,157 --> 00:22:15,020 a means to a non-knowledge ends, to a non-copyright ends. 298 00:22:15,250 --> 00:22:18,328 So, for example, they are using it to support the societies 299 00:22:18,328 --> 00:22:20,762 that might happen to be associated with publishing 300 00:22:20,762 --> 00:22:23,892 that particular journal, that society that might study 301 00:22:23,985 --> 00:22:25,208 one particular of science. 302 00:22:25,392 --> 00:22:28,336 That society, of course, is valuable, but what they are doing 303 00:22:28,336 --> 00:22:31,357 is using copyright to support that society. 304 00:22:31,357 --> 00:22:36,775 And the consequence of that strategy is to block access to all but the few. 305 00:22:37,221 --> 00:22:40,078 We don't achieve the objectives of the Enlightenment, 306 00:22:40,155 --> 00:22:44,389 we achieve the reality of an elite-nment, the elite-nment 307 00:22:44,389 --> 00:22:47,624 which describes the way in which we spread knowledge 308 00:22:47,624 --> 00:22:50,659 despite the ideals of the Enlightenment. 309 00:22:50,706 --> 00:22:55,791 And the point I'm emphasizing here is that it's for no good copyright reason. 310 00:22:56,714 --> 00:23:01,533 Now, the slowness inside of science to embrace this more broadly, 311 00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:05,121 especially among the smaller publishers, may surprise some, 312 00:23:05,198 --> 00:23:08,976 or maybe it doesn't surprise. The whole design of science 313 00:23:09,068 --> 00:23:13,496 is to be a fad-resistor, the idea is to have an infrastructure 314 00:23:13,573 --> 00:23:17,490 that avoids fads, and tradition then becomes the metric of what's right 315 00:23:17,521 --> 00:23:18,805 or of what's good in science. 316 00:23:18,882 --> 00:23:25,181 But I think it's time to recognize that Free Access, as in free, as in speech access 317 00:23:25,181 --> 00:23:26,866 is no fad. 318 00:23:26,866 --> 00:23:32,977 And it's time to push this non fad more broadly in the context of science. 319 00:23:33,561 --> 00:23:38,623 Now, just because I'm talking about how bad some area of science is, 320 00:23:38,762 --> 00:23:43,011 I don't mean to suggest that the arts is good, right? 321 00:23:43,011 --> 00:23:45,984 We have practices in the context of the arts that are just as bad, here. 322 00:23:46,138 --> 00:23:51,408 For example, think about a recent episode around YouTube. 323 00:23:51,531 --> 00:23:54,586 You know, we should not minimize the significance of YouTube 324 00:23:54,647 --> 00:23:56,926 in the infrastructure of culture right now. 325 00:23:57,003 --> 00:23:59,611 YouTube now has 43 different languages. 326 00:23:59,672 --> 00:24:03,466 There is more uploaded in one month on Youtube 327 00:24:03,512 --> 00:24:08,311 than was broadcast by the major networks in the United States 328 00:24:08,327 --> 00:24:10,557 over the last 60 years. 329 00:24:11,342 --> 00:24:16,012 Every single day, 6 new years of video gets uploaded to YouTube. 330 00:24:16,135 --> 00:24:19,289 There are 2 billion views of YouTube every single year. 331 00:24:19,381 --> 00:24:24,376 every single day, sorry. That's 40% increase over just the last year. 332 00:24:24,484 --> 00:24:28,232 And I've been famously a fan of this extraordinary site 333 00:24:28,340 --> 00:24:31,679 because I celebrate the kind of read-write creativity 334 00:24:31,756 --> 00:24:34,322 that I think YouTube has encouraged. 335 00:24:34,322 --> 00:24:38,675 And I got this sense of what we should think of as read-write creativity 336 00:24:38,675 --> 00:24:40,927 when I was reading testimony at this place 337 00:24:40,927 --> 00:24:44,345 by this man, John Philip Souza, in 1906. 338 00:24:44,391 --> 00:24:48,914 when he was - I didn't read it in 1906 but the testimony was given in 1906 - 339 00:24:49,145 --> 00:24:52,419 when Souza was testifying about this technology, 340 00:24:52,419 --> 00:24:56,090 what he called "talking machines". 341 00:24:56,660 --> 00:25:00,461 Now, Souza was not a fan of the talking machines. 342 00:25:00,861 --> 00:25:02,454 This is what he had to say about them: 343 00:25:02,561 --> 00:25:06,436 "These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development 344 00:25:06,513 --> 00:25:08,013 of music in this country. 345 00:25:08,244 --> 00:25:11,100 When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings 346 00:25:11,300 --> 00:25:13,898 you would find young people together singing the songs 347 00:25:13,898 --> 00:25:15,875 of the day or the old songs. 348 00:25:15,875 --> 00:25:20,783 Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. 349 00:25:21,660 --> 00:25:24,693 We will not have a vocal chord left," Souza said, 350 00:25:24,693 --> 00:25:27,790 "The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, 351 00:25:27,898 --> 00:25:32,362 as was the tail of man when he came from the ape." 352 00:25:34,716 --> 00:25:36,401 Now this is the picture I want you to focus on. 353 00:25:36,539 --> 00:25:40,008 This picture of "young people together, singing the songs of the day 354 00:25:40,008 --> 00:25:41,231 or the old songs". 355 00:25:41,231 --> 00:25:46,671 This is a picture of culture. We could call it, using modern computer terminology, 356 00:25:46,671 --> 00:25:48,941 a kind of read-write culture. 357 00:25:49,417 --> 00:25:52,780 It's a culture where people participate in the creation and the re-creation 358 00:25:52,780 --> 00:25:55,107 of their culture: in that sense, it's read-write. 359 00:25:56,061 --> 00:25:59,451 And the opposite of read-write creativity, then, we should call 360 00:25:59,451 --> 00:26:03,933 "read-only" culture. A culture where creativity is consumed 361 00:26:03,933 --> 00:26:09,522 but the consumer is not a creator. A culture, in this sense, that's top-down, 362 00:26:09,691 --> 00:26:12,807 where the vocal cords of the millions of ordinary potential creators 363 00:26:12,930 --> 00:26:16,644 has been lost, and lost, because, as Souza said, 364 00:26:16,736 --> 00:26:22,668 because of these infernal machines: technology, technology like this, 365 00:26:22,791 --> 00:26:25,833 or technology like this, to produce a culture like this, 366 00:26:26,602 --> 00:26:31,210 a culture which enabled efficient consumption, what we call "reading", 367 00:26:32,056 --> 00:26:36,736 but inefficient amateur production, what we should call "writing". 368 00:26:37,321 --> 00:26:41,017 A culture good for listening, but not a culture good for speaking, 369 00:26:41,079 --> 00:26:44,908 a culture good for watching, a culture not good for creating. 370 00:26:46,246 --> 00:26:49,434 Now, the first popular instantiation of the internet, 371 00:26:49,434 --> 00:26:51,446 long after you guys gave us the World Wide Web, 372 00:26:51,446 --> 00:26:54,460 but the first one people really paid attention to, 373 00:26:54,876 --> 00:26:59,841 around 1997 and 1998, was a read-only internet. 374 00:27:00,041 --> 00:27:04,990 So, Napster, which of course, built the largest music archive, 375 00:27:04,990 --> 00:27:09,212 is still a music archive of music created by others 376 00:27:09,212 --> 00:27:13,361 and the legal version, the iTunes Music Store, was an archive of the music 377 00:27:13,361 --> 00:27:16,861 created by others, that you could buy for 99 cents. 378 00:27:17,014 --> 00:27:19,153 These were technologies to enable access, 379 00:27:19,153 --> 00:27:21,380 but access to culture created elsewhere. 380 00:27:22,318 --> 00:27:25,654 But then, shortly in - after the turn of the century, I think, 381 00:27:25,731 --> 00:27:28,082 the internet became fundamentally read-write. 382 00:27:28,698 --> 00:27:31,554 People began taking, and remixing, and sharing 383 00:27:31,554 --> 00:27:36,441 their creativity on the internet, and YouTube was the platform for that. 384 00:27:36,488 --> 00:27:40,650 So, my favorite example, which I first saw on YouTube, is this: 385 00:27:40,712 --> 00:27:46,310 [Read my lips by: Atmo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhlHUTBgAMw] 386 00:27:51,218 --> 00:27:59,498 "Bush: My love, there's only you in my life, 387 00:27:59,852 --> 00:28:03,576 the only thing that's right. 388 00:28:06,668 --> 00:28:14,847 Blair: My first love: you're every breath that I take, 389 00:28:14,970 --> 00:28:19,992 you're every step I make. 390 00:28:21,377 --> 00:28:28,539 Bush: And I, I want to share 391 00:28:28,631 --> 00:28:34,699 Bush and Blair: all my love with you 392 00:28:35,330 --> 00:28:39,429 Bush: No one else will do. 393 00:28:41,922 --> 00:28:44,206 Blair: And your eyes 394 00:28:44,206 --> 00:28:46,199 Bush: Your eyes, your eyes 395 00:28:46,199 --> 00:28:52,820 Bush and Blair: they tell me how much you care for... 396 00:28:52,820 --> 00:28:55,707 announcer: remember to(?) take dictation" 397 00:28:55,707 --> 00:28:59,608 Lessig: OK. And then.more recently, I don't know if (?) many of you 398 00:28:59,608 --> 00:29:01,662 have seen this extraordinary site ThruYou. 399 00:29:01,755 --> 00:29:05,194 This is a site that takes content only from YouTube 400 00:29:05,286 --> 00:29:09,999 and remixes it to produce albums and videos. And this is his latest, you know. 401 00:29:10,091 --> 00:29:12,114 Voice: This is my mother: 402 00:29:12,206 --> 00:29:15,727 Mother: Howdy, howdy. OK. 403 00:29:15,727 --> 00:29:20,232 [plays a continuo on keyboard] 404 00:29:20,401 --> 00:29:22,086 Tenesan1 [see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J8sSXO9VWk ] 405 00:29:22,086 --> 00:29:24,878 Tenesan1: The song I'm going to sing, I wrote, is called "Green" 406 00:29:24,924 --> 00:29:28,889 because ... (?) 407 00:29:29,904 --> 00:29:35,706 I'm seing beauty created on the land 408 00:29:37,537 --> 00:29:44,724 On Earth the third day, producing all the plants 409 00:29:45,077 --> 00:29:52,603 Mother Nature created by the most high God 410 00:29:52,819 --> 00:29:58,488 I'm seeing beauty and it's green to me 411 00:29:58,488 --> 00:30:04,198 [other instruments enter] 412 00:30:04,198 --> 00:30:09,163 Spotting tranquillity, peace and restoration 413 00:30:11,116 --> 00:30:19,137 Check all the water travelling from roots 414 00:30:19,275 --> 00:30:26,261 Then you will see roots digging deep, building a strong foundation 415 00:30:26,369 --> 00:30:33,326 Then finally a stem shoots through 416 00:30:33,326 --> 00:30:38,063 I'm seeing beauty, it's green.. 417 00:30:38,063 --> 00:30:42,011 Lessig: So this is then what I think of as a platform for read-write creativity. 418 00:30:42,134 --> 00:30:44,544 But then the second stage of this, I think is ultimately 419 00:30:44,544 --> 00:30:46,905 much more interesting. It's the way that this platform 420 00:30:46,905 --> 00:30:49,253 has become a platform for read-write communities, 421 00:30:49,330 --> 00:30:53,930 which means creativity, which then gets remixed by others 422 00:30:54,022 --> 00:30:56,802 in response to the initial read-write creativity. 423 00:30:56,802 --> 00:30:58,364 So here is an example. This video: 424 00:30:58,364 --> 00:31:02,903 [ "Crank That" by Soulja Boy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLGLum5SyKQ + Superman:] You Soulja Boy.. 425 00:31:02,995 --> 00:31:07,178 I got a new dance fo you all called the soulja boy 426 00:31:07,178 --> 00:31:10,212 You gotta punch then crank back three times from left to right 427 00:31:10,212 --> 00:31:16,180 Aaah! 428 00:31:16,288 --> 00:31:18,142 Lessig: so that video inspired this video: 429 00:31:18,249 --> 00:31:33,231 [video 2] You Soulja Boy ... 430 00:31:33,277 --> 00:31:35,794 Lessig: which then inspired this video 431 00:31:35,794 --> 00:31:51,964 [Video 3] Soulja Boy ... 432 00:31:51,964 --> 00:31:54,506 Lessig: Well here is another example. I'm sure many of you remember 433 00:31:54,506 --> 00:31:56,390 these extraordinary movies by John Hughes, 434 00:31:56,467 --> 00:31:59,036 what we used to think of as the Brat Pack, until we knew 435 00:31:59,036 --> 00:32:00,828 that there was a Brat Pack before these guys. 436 00:32:00,936 --> 00:32:03,923 So this is the first bit of cultural, 437 00:32:04,046 --> 00:32:05,577 and I think here is the second. 438 00:32:05,607 --> 00:32:10,462 This is a music video by the band Phoenix, with their song Lisztomania: 439 00:32:10,523 --> 00:32:17,071 [Lisztomania: Phoenix' clip] 440 00:32:17,086 --> 00:32:19,253 Lessig (over clip): So classic music video style 441 00:32:19,376 --> 00:32:23,339 [clip continues] 442 00:32:23,339 --> 00:32:25,270 So sentimental 443 00:32:25,270 --> 00:32:28,953 Lessig: Somebody got the idea that they would take John Hughes' content 444 00:32:28,953 --> 00:32:32,713 and remix it with the music by Phoenix. They produced this: 445 00:32:34,005 --> 00:32:50,594 [remix] 446 00:32:50,594 --> 00:32:52,010 So sentimental 447 00:32:53,086 --> 00:32:54,571 not sentimental, no 448 00:32:54,648 --> 00:32:57,244 romantic not disgusting yet 449 00:32:57,337 --> 00:33:02,457 Darling, I'm down and lonely when with the fortunate is only 450 00:33:03,580 --> 00:33:05,034 I've been looking for something else 451 00:33:05,034 --> 00:33:09,254 Do let, do let, do let, jugulate, do let, do let, do 452 00:33:09,331 --> 00:33:11,905 Let's go slowly discouraged 453 00:33:12,043 --> 00:33:19,130 Distant from other interests on your favorite weekend ending... 454 00:33:19,130 --> 00:33:22,721 Lessig: Then somebody had the idea that they would make a local version 455 00:33:22,844 --> 00:33:25,955 of this remix video. So this is the Brooklyn version: 456 00:33:26,109 --> 00:33:57,892 [Brooklyn remix:] 457 00:33:57,984 --> 00:34:01,311 Lessig: And then San Francisco decided they'd like to copy: 458 00:34:01,434 --> 00:34:28,737 [San Francisco remix:] 459 00:34:28,737 --> 00:34:31,528 Lessig: And then Boston University decided they would copy: 460 00:34:31,681 --> 00:34:58,596 [Boston U remix:] 461 00:34:58,596 --> 00:35:01,198 Lessig: There are others, literally scores of these on the internet, 462 00:35:01,198 --> 00:35:02,652 from every place around the world. 463 00:35:02,683 --> 00:35:04,629 (1 sentence ????) 464 00:35:04,629 --> 00:35:09,583 every other place... these people doing the same kind of remix. 465 00:35:09,676 --> 00:35:15,171 The point to recognize is that this is then what Souza was romanticizing 466 00:35:15,263 --> 00:35:18,598 when Souza was talking about the young people getting together 467 00:35:18,598 --> 00:35:20,436 and singing the songs of the day or the old songs. 468 00:35:20,529 --> 00:35:22,967 But they are not singing the songs or the old songs 469 00:35:22,967 --> 00:35:26,513 in their backyard or on the corner, they are now singing them 470 00:35:26,513 --> 00:35:30,173 on this free digital platform that allows people to sing and respond, 471 00:35:30,250 --> 00:35:32,899 and respond again all across the world, 472 00:35:32,976 --> 00:35:37,132 in my view, important and valuable, in understanding 473 00:35:37,132 --> 00:35:39,913 how this kind of culture develops and spreads. 474 00:35:39,913 --> 00:35:41,059 Now, is it legal? 475 00:35:42,798 --> 00:35:46,605 Well, YouTube has just stepped into this battle, of whether it's legal. 476 00:35:46,697 --> 00:35:49,540 They've launched this Copyright School 477 00:35:49,602 --> 00:35:51,713 So I will give you a little bit of their copyright school. 478 00:35:51,744 --> 00:36:11,206 [video from http://www.youtube.com/copyright_school - original subtitled in ca 40 languages] 479 00:36:11,206 --> 00:36:13,773 "Everybody has really been looking forward to the new video 480 00:36:13,773 --> 00:36:15,058 "from Lumpy and the Lumpettes. 481 00:36:16,242 --> 00:36:18,135 "Even Lumpy. 482 00:36:23,173 --> 00:36:28,167 "Russell's a huge fan. He can't wait to tell all his friends about it. 483 00:36:29,382 --> 00:36:33,022 "'Hey, Russell, you didn't create that video! 484 00:36:33,145 --> 00:36:35,525 "'You just copied someone else's content.'" 485 00:36:35,648 --> 00:36:38,646 Lessig: OK, this first part is pretty standard, 486 00:36:38,738 --> 00:36:40,849 talking about copying people's content, uploading it, 487 00:36:41,003 --> 00:36:43,082 and even copying a live performance and uploading it. 488 00:36:43,205 --> 00:36:46,468 And that's fair, that's true, that's accurate in its statement 489 00:36:46,468 --> 00:36:49,524 of what copyright law is, and what I think copyright law should be. 490 00:36:49,524 --> 00:36:51,671 But I want to focus on their talk about remix, 491 00:36:51,747 --> 00:36:54,557 which might be confusing to you, and if you do, you should buy 492 00:36:54,557 --> 00:36:57,370 multiple copies of my book, "Remix" to understand what it's about. 493 00:36:57,478 --> 00:37:00,119 But here's YouTube's version of the story of remix 494 00:37:00,166 --> 00:37:04,554 [YouTube video cont.] "'Oh, Russell! Your reuse of the Lumpy's content is clever, 495 00:37:04,554 --> 00:37:06,774 "'but did you get permission for it? 496 00:37:06,774 --> 00:37:09,822 "'Mashups or remixes of content may also require permission 497 00:37:09,822 --> 00:37:12,392 "'from the original copyright owner, depending on whether or not 498 00:37:12,392 --> 00:37:14,369 "'the use is a fair use. 499 00:37:14,462 --> 00:37:34,495 "'In the United States [text shown onscreen is read very fast] ... 500 00:37:34,510 --> 00:37:36,472 "'...you should consult a qualified copyright attorney.'" 501 00:37:37,503 --> 00:37:41,380 Lessig: OK. "Consult a qualified copyright attorney"? 502 00:37:41,472 --> 00:37:46,065 These are 15-year olds. You're trying to teach 15-year olds 503 00:37:46,065 --> 00:37:48,247 how to obey the law, and what you do is you give them 504 00:37:48,247 --> 00:37:50,377 this thing called fair use, and you read it so fast 505 00:37:50,377 --> 00:37:51,862 nobody can understand it. 506 00:37:51,877 --> 00:37:53,900 You believe you've actually explained something sensible? 507 00:37:53,946 --> 00:37:55,139 This is crazy talk. 508 00:37:55,262 --> 00:37:58,698 Of course we train lawyers to understand it, and not think it's crazy talk, 509 00:37:58,805 --> 00:38:01,957 but non lawyers should recognize it's crazy talk. 510 00:38:01,957 --> 00:38:04,185 It's an absurd system here. 511 00:38:04,231 --> 00:38:06,894 And of course, a sensible system would say: 512 00:38:06,971 --> 00:38:12,049 "Then it should be plainly legal for Russell to make a remix, 513 00:38:12,049 --> 00:38:15,435 "a non commercial consumer making a remix of content 514 00:38:15,450 --> 00:38:19,367 "that he sees out there, even if it's not legal for YouTube 515 00:38:19,367 --> 00:38:22,776 "to distribute it without paying some sort of royalty 516 00:38:22,776 --> 00:38:26,338 "to copyright owners whose work has been remixed." 517 00:38:26,338 --> 00:38:29,664 Now the point is, the significance of this kind of culture, 518 00:38:29,664 --> 00:38:31,940 this kind of remix culture, and the opportunity 519 00:38:31,940 --> 00:38:35,391 for this remix culture to flourish is recognized by people on the left, 520 00:38:35,498 --> 00:38:39,233 and the right. Here is my favorite little bit. 521 00:38:39,248 --> 00:38:42,342 It's a little bit bad video, but it's by one of my favorite 522 00:38:42,342 --> 00:38:44,657 libertarians from Cato Institute, which is one of the 523 00:38:44,657 --> 00:38:47,367 most important libertarian think-tanks in the United States, 524 00:38:47,367 --> 00:38:48,598 talking about this: 525 00:38:48,598 --> 00:38:51,733 Libertarian man: Copyright policy isn't just about how to incentivize 526 00:38:51,810 --> 00:38:54,007 the production of a certain kind of artistic commodity. 527 00:38:54,007 --> 00:38:57,191 It's about what level of control we're going to permit to be 528 00:38:57,191 --> 00:39:01,534 exercised over our social realities, social realities that are now 529 00:39:01,580 --> 00:39:04,518 inevitably permeated by pop culture. 530 00:39:04,625 --> 00:39:08,411 I think it's important that we keep these two different kinds 531 00:39:08,411 --> 00:39:12,047 of public uses in mind. If we only focus on how to 532 00:39:12,109 --> 00:39:14,583 maximize the supply of one, 533 00:39:14,706 --> 00:39:18,859 I think we risk suppressing this different and richer 534 00:39:18,859 --> 00:39:21,837 and, in some ways, maybe even more important one. 535 00:39:21,914 --> 00:39:24,604 Lessig: Bingo. That's the point. 536 00:39:24,696 --> 00:39:28,370 There are two kinds of cultures here, two kinds of culture: 537 00:39:28,447 --> 00:39:30,901 the commercial culture and the amateur culture. 538 00:39:30,947 --> 00:39:34,613 And we have to have a system that tries to recognize and encourage both. 539 00:39:34,613 --> 00:39:39,362 And even YouTube, now, the company most responsible 540 00:39:39,362 --> 00:39:41,675 for this revival of this remix culture, 541 00:39:41,675 --> 00:39:45,650 even YouTube, now, is criminalizing the remixer. 542 00:39:45,696 --> 00:39:46,935 OK, now that's the argument. 543 00:39:46,935 --> 00:39:48,235 Here is what I think we need to do here. 544 00:39:48,235 --> 00:39:51,886 In both these contexts, both science and culture, 545 00:39:51,979 --> 00:39:53,463 we need reform. 546 00:39:53,463 --> 00:39:55,909 That's not to say we need the abolition of copyright. 547 00:39:55,986 --> 00:39:59,479 There are copyright abolitionists out there, and I'm not one them. 548 00:39:59,479 --> 00:40:03,167 What we need is reform, both of the law and of us. 549 00:40:03,229 --> 00:40:08,070 So, of the law: I, last year, had the opportunity - 550 00:40:08,070 --> 00:40:10,729 surprising, from the perspective of 10 years ago - 551 00:40:10,729 --> 00:40:13,878 but I was invited by WIPO to talk to WIPO, 552 00:40:13,878 --> 00:40:16,552 and both my presentation and the current Director General 553 00:40:16,629 --> 00:40:20,274 has a conception of what WIPO should do here 554 00:40:20,274 --> 00:40:22,613 and it's very similar. They should launch what we could think of 555 00:40:22,613 --> 00:40:26,146 as a Blue Skies Commission, a commission to think about 556 00:40:26,146 --> 00:40:29,326 what architecture for copyright makes sense in the digital age. 557 00:40:29,388 --> 00:40:32,168 The presumption is, copyright is necessary, 558 00:40:32,168 --> 00:40:35,325 but the presumption is also that the architecture from the 20th century 559 00:40:35,325 --> 00:40:37,786 doesn't make sense in a digital context. 560 00:40:37,879 --> 00:40:41,228 And the elements of, in my view, of this architecture 561 00:40:41,228 --> 00:40:42,805 that would make sense, are 5. 562 00:40:42,820 --> 00:40:46,551 #1 Copyright has got to be simple. If it purports to regulate 563 00:40:46,567 --> 00:40:49,667 15 year olds, 15 year olds must be able to understand it. 564 00:40:49,759 --> 00:40:52,491 They don't understand it now. 565 00:40:52,491 --> 00:40:53,945 No one understands it now. 566 00:40:54,037 --> 00:40:56,255 And we need to remake it, to make it simple, 567 00:40:56,302 --> 00:40:59,800 if it tends to regulate as broadly as it regulates. 568 00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:01,777 #2 It needs to be efficient. 569 00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:05,024 Copyright is a property system. It also happens to be 570 00:41:05,024 --> 00:41:08,168 the most inefficient property system known to man. 571 00:41:09,137 --> 00:41:12,626 We can't know who owns what under this system, 572 00:41:12,733 --> 00:41:15,632 because we have no system for recording ownership 573 00:41:15,663 --> 00:41:18,070 and allowing us to allocate ownership as we want. 574 00:41:18,070 --> 00:41:23,155 And the only remedy to that is to restore a kind of formality, 575 00:41:23,155 --> 00:41:25,952 at least a formality required to maintain a copyright. 576 00:41:26,029 --> 00:41:29,956 And this is a position that's even supported by the RIAA 577 00:41:30,048 --> 00:41:32,079 as one of the essential reforms to copyright. 578 00:41:32,079 --> 00:41:37,102 #3 Copyright has got to be better targeted. It's got to regulate selectively. 579 00:41:37,194 --> 00:41:39,519 So if you think about the distinction between copies and remix, 580 00:41:39,581 --> 00:41:42,607 and the distinction between the professional and the amateur, 581 00:41:42,684 --> 00:41:46,049 of course, we get this matrix - lawyers deal in two dimensions, 582 00:41:46,111 --> 00:41:48,644 you guys in hundred dimensions but here is my two dimensions - 583 00:41:48,690 --> 00:41:51,682 What we have in the current regime of copyright 584 00:41:51,729 --> 00:41:55,006 is presumption of copyright regulates the same 585 00:41:55,006 --> 00:41:57,158 across these four possibilities. 586 00:41:57,219 --> 00:42:00,435 But that's a mistake. Obviously copyright needs to regulate 587 00:42:00,435 --> 00:42:04,028 efficiently here, copies of professional works, 588 00:42:04,044 --> 00:42:08,304 so 10'000 copies of Madonna's latest CD is a problem 589 00:42:08,304 --> 00:42:09,958 that copyright law needs to worry about, 590 00:42:10,035 --> 00:42:13,964 But this area, amateurs remixing culture needs to be free 591 00:42:13,964 --> 00:42:17,211 of the regulation of copyright. Not fair use, but free use. 592 00:42:17,211 --> 00:42:20,011 Not even triggering copyright's concern. 593 00:42:20,057 --> 00:42:22,431 And then these two middle cases are harder. 594 00:42:22,477 --> 00:42:25,208 They need a little more freedom, but they need to assure 595 00:42:25,208 --> 00:42:28,332 some kind of control. So if you share Madonna's latest CD 596 00:42:28,332 --> 00:42:31,255 with your 10'000 best friends, that's a problem. 597 00:42:31,301 --> 00:42:33,432 There needs to be some response to that problem. 598 00:42:33,432 --> 00:42:36,646 And if you take a book and turn it into a movie, 599 00:42:36,738 --> 00:42:39,276 I think it's still appropriate that you get permission for that, 600 00:42:39,276 --> 00:42:40,822 though of course, you need to be able to remix 601 00:42:40,822 --> 00:42:43,619 in the way that we saw Soderberg remixed that video 602 00:42:43,635 --> 00:42:46,709 of Bush and Endless Love. 603 00:42:46,847 --> 00:42:49,324 The point here is that if you think about this, I'm talking about 604 00:42:49,324 --> 00:42:52,315 deregulating a significant space of culture, 605 00:42:52,361 --> 00:42:55,223 and focusing the regulation of copyright work and do some good. 606 00:42:55,223 --> 00:42:58,103 #4 It needs to be effective. And effective means 607 00:42:58,103 --> 00:43:00,972 it must actually work in getting artists paid. 608 00:43:01,033 --> 00:43:04,891 The current system does not work in getting artists paid. 609 00:43:04,891 --> 00:43:06,899 And #5 It needs to be realistic. 610 00:43:06,899 --> 00:43:12,485 Think about the problem of peer-to-peer, quote, "piracy" internationally, 611 00:43:12,978 --> 00:43:16,085 We've, for the last decade, been waging what is referred to 612 00:43:16,085 --> 00:43:19,878 as a war. My friend, the late Jack Valenti, former head of the 613 00:43:19,955 --> 00:43:22,627 Motion Picture Association of America used to refer to it as 614 00:43:22,627 --> 00:43:27,832 his own, quote, "terrorist war", where apparently the terrorists in this war 615 00:43:27,832 --> 00:43:30,288 are our children. 616 00:43:30,335 --> 00:43:33,574 Now this war has been a total failure. 617 00:43:33,574 --> 00:43:38,923 It has not achieved its objective of reducing copyrights sharing 618 00:43:38,923 --> 00:43:40,869 or illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. 619 00:43:40,930 --> 00:43:44,734 And I know the response of some to totally failed wars 620 00:43:44,734 --> 00:43:48,206 is to continue to wage that war forever, and ever more viciously, 621 00:43:48,237 --> 00:43:51,209 but I suggest we adopt the opposite response here. 622 00:43:51,209 --> 00:43:54,663 We sue for peace. We sue for peace in this war, 623 00:43:54,663 --> 00:43:57,477 and consider proposals that would give us the opportunity 624 00:43:57,477 --> 00:44:00,020 to achieve the objectives of copyright, 625 00:44:00,020 --> 00:44:01,336 without waging this war. 626 00:44:01,336 --> 00:44:05,008 So, compulsory licenses, voluntary collective licenses 627 00:44:05,008 --> 00:44:07,675 or the German Greens' suggestion of a cultural flat rate 628 00:44:07,675 --> 00:44:10,369 which would be collected and allocated to artists 629 00:44:10,369 --> 00:44:13,516 on the basis of the harm suffered because of P2P file-sharing, 630 00:44:13,516 --> 00:44:16,060 all of these are alternatives to waging a war 631 00:44:16,060 --> 00:44:20,197 to stop sharing, when sharing is of course at the core 632 00:44:20,197 --> 00:44:21,435 of the architecture of the Net, 633 00:44:21,435 --> 00:44:24,853 and all of them recognize that if we achieve 634 00:44:24,853 --> 00:44:29,852 that alternative, we don't need to block this system of sharing. 635 00:44:29,899 --> 00:44:33,962 Now, the thing to think about is, if we had had one of these alternatives 636 00:44:33,962 --> 00:44:37,797 10 years ago, what would the world look like today, 637 00:44:37,797 --> 00:44:38,835 how would it be different? 638 00:44:38,897 --> 00:44:41,220 Now one difference is, artists would get more money, 639 00:44:41,220 --> 00:44:42,705 they would have gotten more money, because 640 00:44:42,705 --> 00:44:44,829 while we have been waging war against artists [sic: "children", "pirates"?] 641 00:44:44,829 --> 00:44:47,688 artists haven't got anything, only lawyers have. 642 00:44:47,688 --> 00:44:49,435 Businesses would have had more competition, 643 00:44:49,435 --> 00:44:52,352 the rules would have been clear, we would have more companies 644 00:44:52,352 --> 00:44:54,298 than just Apple and Microsoft thinking out 645 00:44:54,298 --> 00:44:56,567 how they could exploit this new digital technologies. 646 00:44:56,628 --> 00:44:59,133 But most important to me, is, we wouldn't have a generation 647 00:44:59,133 --> 00:45:01,733 of criminals who have grown up being called criminals 648 00:45:01,733 --> 00:45:04,145 because they are technically pirates, according to 649 00:45:04,253 --> 00:45:06,230 this outdated copyright law. 650 00:45:06,522 --> 00:45:09,243 So these 5 objectives would go into the conception of what 651 00:45:09,243 --> 00:45:11,317 this Blue Skies commission should think about 652 00:45:11,317 --> 00:45:13,881 and I think it should think of this in a 5 year process 653 00:45:13,881 --> 00:45:17,184 talking about something not to into effect for 10 years. 654 00:45:17,184 --> 00:45:21,655 Think of it as a kind of Map for Berne II, but Bern II being 655 00:45:21,655 --> 00:45:25,354 a system that could work to achieve the objectives of copyright 656 00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:27,547 in a digital age. That's what the law should do. 657 00:45:27,639 --> 00:45:30,492 But most important right now is what we need to do. 658 00:45:30,492 --> 00:45:34,791 We, both in the context of business - so in the context of business, 659 00:45:34,791 --> 00:45:37,956 we need to think about how to better enable legal reuse 660 00:45:37,956 --> 00:45:39,225 of copyrighted material. 661 00:45:39,225 --> 00:45:42,933 And companies like Google and Microsoft's Bing 662 00:45:42,994 --> 00:45:44,356 need to do more here. 663 00:45:44,356 --> 00:45:46,959 We're in the age of remix, where writing is remix, 664 00:45:46,959 --> 00:45:49,942 where teachers tell students to go out to the web 665 00:45:49,942 --> 00:45:51,950 and gather as much content as you can in order to 666 00:45:51,950 --> 00:45:55,289 write a report about whatever it is they are assigning them 667 00:45:55,289 --> 00:45:56,358 to write reports about. 668 00:45:56,358 --> 00:45:59,570 That means Google and Bing need to help our kids 669 00:45:59,570 --> 00:46:02,508 do it legally, which they don't, right now. 670 00:46:02,508 --> 00:46:05,037 So for example, this extraordinary service, which Google 671 00:46:05,037 --> 00:46:07,121 gives you when you want to do an image search: 672 00:46:07,152 --> 00:46:10,124 let's say you search for an image, you do an image search on flowers, 673 00:46:10,124 --> 00:46:13,700 This, over here - I don't know if you play with this - 674 00:46:13,700 --> 00:46:16,158 is really extraordinary: you can then narrow the search 675 00:46:16,158 --> 00:46:17,750 on the basis of many of these categories, 676 00:46:17,750 --> 00:46:19,834 including like the color of the photographs. 677 00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:22,608 So you want pink flowers, there you can see all the pink flowers, 678 00:46:22,608 --> 00:46:23,816 just by clicking on the link. 679 00:46:23,862 --> 00:46:28,378 But why, in this extraction, don't we also have an option 680 00:46:28,378 --> 00:46:30,534 for something like this: show reusable? 681 00:46:30,596 --> 00:46:34,907 Show the content that is explicitly licensed to be reusable, 682 00:46:34,907 --> 00:46:37,439 because Google indexes Creative Commons licenses 683 00:46:37,439 --> 00:46:38,723 associated with these images. 684 00:46:38,723 --> 00:46:42,561 Why not make it on the surface easy to begin to filter out 685 00:46:42,608 --> 00:46:44,900 those that you can use with the permission of the author 686 00:46:44,946 --> 00:46:47,214 from those that presumptively require a lawyer? 687 00:46:47,214 --> 00:46:49,668 Same thing in the context of a site like YouTube. 688 00:46:49,668 --> 00:46:53,479 Why don't we enable more easily the signaling by the creator 689 00:46:53,479 --> 00:46:56,008 that others should be able to download and reuse content, 690 00:46:56,008 --> 00:46:59,786 not so much to redefine what Fair Use is - 691 00:46:59,786 --> 00:47:02,214 I still think there is a fair use claim even if there isn't 692 00:47:02,214 --> 00:47:05,625 permission given to re-use - but at least to encourage people 693 00:47:05,625 --> 00:47:08,105 to begin to signal that their freedom to share 694 00:47:08,151 --> 00:47:10,251 has been authorized by the author. 695 00:47:10,251 --> 00:47:14,749 And then in the academy, which I think we are speaking 696 00:47:14,749 --> 00:47:16,849 about here right now. 697 00:47:16,849 --> 00:47:19,282 We need to recognize in the academy, I think, 698 00:47:19,282 --> 00:47:24,077 an ethical obligation, much stronger than the ones Stallman spoke of 699 00:47:24,077 --> 00:47:26,572 in the context of software. An ethical obligation 700 00:47:26,572 --> 00:47:28,564 which is at the core of our mission. 701 00:47:28,595 --> 00:47:31,196 Our mission is universal access to knowledge. 702 00:47:31,196 --> 00:47:33,507 Universal access to knowledge: 703 00:47:33,538 --> 00:47:36,278 not American University access to knowledge, 704 00:47:36,340 --> 00:47:40,106 but universal access to knowledge in every part of the globe. 705 00:47:40,106 --> 00:47:43,106 And that obligation has certain entailments. 706 00:47:43,106 --> 00:47:48,614 Entailment #1 is that we need to keep this work free, 707 00:47:48,614 --> 00:47:50,767 where free means licensed freely. 708 00:47:50,767 --> 00:47:54,838 Now this needs to be part of an ethical point about what we do. 709 00:47:54,838 --> 00:47:58,942 It is resisted by people who say that archiving is enough. 710 00:47:58,973 --> 00:48:02,246 But that is wrong, I think. 711 00:48:02,246 --> 00:48:05,838 Archiving is not enough, because what it does is 712 00:48:05,838 --> 00:48:09,523 leave these rights out-there. And by leaving these rights our-there 713 00:48:09,523 --> 00:48:12,155 it encourages this architecture of closed access. 714 00:48:12,155 --> 00:48:16,175 It encourages models of access that block access 715 00:48:16,175 --> 00:48:17,613 to the non-elite around the world. 716 00:48:17,613 --> 00:48:23,536 And it discourages unplanned, unanticipated and "uncool" innovation. 717 00:48:23,536 --> 00:48:25,860 That's the thing that publishers would have said 718 00:48:25,891 --> 00:48:28,020 of Google Books, when Google Books had the idea 719 00:48:28,020 --> 00:48:30,679 to take all books published and put them on the Web. 720 00:48:30,725 --> 00:48:32,952 Right, publishers thought that was very uncool, 721 00:48:32,952 --> 00:48:35,468 but that's exactly the kind of innovation we need to encourage, 722 00:48:35,514 --> 00:48:37,537 and we know it won't be the publishers 723 00:48:37,537 --> 00:48:39,453 that do that kind of innovation. 724 00:48:39,499 --> 00:48:43,607 We don't need for our work, exclusivity. 725 00:48:43,607 --> 00:48:46,877 And we shouldn't practice, with our work, exclusivity. 726 00:48:46,877 --> 00:48:51,049 And we should name those who do, wrong. 727 00:48:51,049 --> 00:48:56,965 Those who do are inconsistent with the ethic of our work. 728 00:48:56,965 --> 00:49:00,342 Now how do we do that? I think we do that by exercising leadership, 729 00:49:00,403 --> 00:49:04,679 leadership by those who can afford to take the lead, 730 00:49:04,679 --> 00:49:08,727 the senior academics, those with tenure, those who can say, 731 00:49:08,742 --> 00:49:11,819 on committees granting tenure, that it doesn't matter 732 00:49:11,819 --> 00:49:14,458 that you didn't publish in the most prestigious journal 733 00:49:14,458 --> 00:49:17,970 if that journal is not Open Access. 734 00:49:17,970 --> 00:49:21,716 People who can begin to help redefine what access to knowledge is, 735 00:49:21,716 --> 00:49:24,752 by supporting Open Access and respecting Open Access 736 00:49:24,752 --> 00:49:27,760 and encouraging Open Access. 737 00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,222 Now, I'm really honored and happy to be able to talk about this 738 00:49:30,222 --> 00:49:34,426 here, where you of course gave us the Web, 739 00:49:34,426 --> 00:49:38,686 and CERN has taken the lead in supporting Open Access 740 00:49:38,686 --> 00:49:41,621 in a crucial space of physics. 741 00:49:41,621 --> 00:49:45,822 And the work that you are doing right now will have a dramatic effect 742 00:49:45,822 --> 00:49:49,662 on changing the debate on science across the globe. 743 00:49:49,662 --> 00:49:51,788 But what we need to do is to think about 744 00:49:51,788 --> 00:49:55,935 how to leverage this leadership into leadership for the globe, 745 00:49:55,935 --> 00:50:02,442 to benefit this area of the globe as much as this area of the globe. 746 00:50:02,442 --> 00:50:04,219 Thank you very much. 747 00:50:04,219 --> 00:50:06,664 (applause) 748 00:50:06,664 --> 00:50:08,241 [credits for Flickr photos] 749 00:50:08,241 --> 00:50:15,403 [This work licensed: CC-BY] 750 00:50:15,464 --> 00:50:19,000 Subtitles: universalsubtitles.org/videos/jD5TB2eebD5d/